Beef #1: Ramming

[dmm]

WOW, is this a great game! Only played the demo so far. Intend to buy. But, as an American I demand my right to complain. So here goes:

Ramming combined with heavy shields unbalances the game. Fortunately (?) the Combat AI can't grasp the concept, even when you tell it that your fleet's strategy is Kamikaze. However, in Tactical mode, you can easily defeat much better (bigger, more advanced) ships with a fleet of kamikazes.

IMHO, MM has modeled warfare correctly -- suicide tactics are indeed extremely effective, as we have seen from WWII and from truck bombs in the Mideast. The problem, though, is that (in the real world)it is difficult to get recruits for suicide missions, and that's the aspect of reality that is missing. To model that, suicide ramming should only be available as an option to elite units, or to units that are close to destruction anyway, or to forces that are severely outgunned.

But that still doesn't stop someone from building large ships equipped almost entirely with shields/armor and sending them into battle with the sole intent of ramming the enemy into oblivion. The Greeks and Romans used to do almost exactly that, and it isn't necessarily a suicide tactic, so my previous suggested rule doesn't apply. But to prevent large armored rammers from unbalancing the game, I would suggest that ramming should not always hit. There should be some sort of "maneuverability" calculation. It should be easy to ram a carrier with a fighter, but difficult to ram an escort with a dreadnought. Using just size and speed would help gameplay and would be easy to implement in the code, but ideally there should also be technology addressing maneuverability.

Also, fix the AI so it understands what Kamikaze is.